The Eternal Belief in Immortality & Worship of the Dead. James George Frazer
had been totally forgotten. In point of fact we saw that among the Warramunga the mythical water-snake Wollunqua, who is regarded as an ancestor of a totemic clan, has made some progress towards deification; for while he is still regarded as the forefather of the clan which bears his name, it is no longer supposed that he is born again of women into the world, but that he lives eternal and invisible under the water of a haunted pool, and that he has it in his power both to help and to harm his people, who pray to him and perform ceremonies in his honour. This awful being, whose voice is heard in the peal of thunder and whose dreadful name may not be pronounced in common life, is not far from godhead; at least he is apparently the nearest approach to it which the imagination of these rude savages has been able to conceive. Lastly, as I have pointed out, the reverence which the Central Australians entertain for their dead ancestors is closely bound up with their totemism; they fail to distinguish clearly or at all between men and their totems, and accordingly the ceremonies which they perform to commemorate the dead are at the same time magical rites designed to ensure an abundant supply of food and of all the other necessaries and conveniences which savage life requires or admits of; indeed, we may with some probability conjecture that the magical intention of these ceremonies is the primary and original one, and that the commemorative intention is secondary and derivative. If that could be proved to be so (which is hardly to be expected), we should be obliged to conclude that in this as in so many enquiries into the remote human past we detect evidence of an Age of Magic preceding anything that deserves to be dignified with the name of religion.
That ends what I have to say at present as to the belief in immortality and the worship of the dead among the Central Australian aborigines. In my next lecture I propose to pursue the enquiry among the other tribes of Australia.
Footnote 137: (return)
Spencer and Gillen, Northern Tribes of Central Australia, pp. 228 sq.
Footnote 138: (return)
Spencer and Gillen, Northern Tribes of Central Australia, pp. 229 sq.
Footnote 139: (return)
Spencer and Gillen, op. cit. pp. 230 sq.
Footnote 140: (return)
Spencer and Gillen, Northern Tribes of Central Australia, pp. 231–238.
Footnote 141: (return)
Spencer and Gillen, op. cit. p. 238.
Footnote 142: (return)
Spencer and Gillen, op. cit. pp. 238 sq.
Footnote 143: (return)
Spencer and Gillen, Northern Tribes of Central Australia, pp. 239–247.
Footnote 144: (return)
Spencer and Gillen, op. cit. p. 248.
Footnote 145: (return)
"On the other hand there is a great difference between the Wollunqua and any other totem, inasmuch as the particular animal is purely mythical, and except for the one great progenitor of the totemic group, is not supposed to exist at the present day" (Spencer and Gillen, Northern Tribes of Central Australia, p. 248).
Footnote 146: (return)
The wingara is the equivalent of the Arunta alcheringa, that is, the earliest legendary or mythical times of which the natives profess to have knowledge.
Footnote 147: (return)
Spencer and Gillen, Northern Tribes of Central Australia, pp. 249 sq.
Footnote 148: (return)
Spencer and Gillen, Northern Tribes of Central Australia, pp. 33 sq., 177 sq.
Footnote 149: (return)
Spencer and Gillen, Native Tribes of Central Australia, pp. 297 sq.
Footnote 150: (return)
Spencer and Gillen, Native Tribes of Central Australia, pp. 316 sq.
Footnote 151: (return)
Spencer and Gillen, op. cit. p. 320.
Footnote 152: (return)
Spencer and Gillen, Northern Tribes of Central Australia, pp. 199–204.
Footnote 153: (return)
Spencer and Gillen, Northern Tribes of Central Australia, pp. 179 sq.
Footnote 154: (return)
Spencer and Gillen, Northern Tribes of Central Australia, pp. 179 sq.
Footnote 155: (return)
Spencer and Gillen, Native Tribes of Central Australia, pp. 358 sq., and p. 343, fig 73.
Footnote 156: (return)
Spencer and Gillen, Native Tribes of Central Australia, p. 176.
Footnote 157: (return)
Spencer and Gillen, op. cit. pp. 182 sq.
Footnote 158: (return)
Spencer and Gillen, Northern Tribes of Central Australia, p. 297.
Footnote 159: (return)
Spencer and Gillen, Northern Tribes of Central Australia, p. 197.
LECTURE VI
THE BELIEF IN IMMORTALITY AMONG THE OTHER ABORIGINES OF AUSTRALIA
Customs and beliefs